The Living Things portfolio contains my signature cows, mountain animals and other four legged and winged creatures.

For an art fair under the theme of  ‘Femininity’ I conceived a collection portraying the famous Swiss fighting cows, for a unique Swiss angle of the motto and their primitive purity. Cows live in one of the rare matriarchies of this planet and determine the leading cow (in charge of the herd when left to their own devices in the Alpine meadows during summer) in a bloodless ritual, by putting their heads together and pushing (think in the lines of arm wrestling). The weaker cow will just walk away, accepting defeat. This can take between 45 seconds and (in case of very strong and stubborn ladies) up to 45 minutes. In several Swiss cantons breeders organize fights to determine and crown ‘La Reine des Alpes’ (Queen of the Alps). These fights have become quite an attraction.

My contemporary renderings of mountain animals like capricorns and bears show them melting into the background, as their equivalents do in their rocky habitat.